About Me

I was a reporter and columnist for 40 years for a chain of newspapers in the suburbs of Chicago. I'm a military veteran having served in the United States Army Combat Engineers (Cpl. E-4) and a Korean War veteran with an Honorable Discharge from the Armed Forces of the United States of America

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Senator Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, explains how the military in Iraq received towels with the KBR logo embroidered on the towels because that is what someone inside the Pentagon wanted. KBR, as most people know, was a subsidiary of Haliburton, the firm which Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO for before joining George W. Bush on the Republican ticket.

In this VIDEO, Sen. Dorgan talks about the "deal" KBR made with the Pentagon for the towels for our military with theKBR logo embroidered into them.

The mainstream media in the United States has put the Iraq War on the back burner and no longer feel the story of the war is worth covering.

THIS IS THE ONLY WAR THAT IS NOT BEING COVERED BY THE MEDIA IN THE UNITED STATES.....AND FOR THAT REASON WE BRING OUR READERS THE TRUE IMAGES FROM THE IRAQ WAR THAT NEVER MAKE IT TO THE NEWS.This graphic video is just one of many we will be presenting because we feel the people of the United States have been given the shaft by the mainstream press who wanted this war in the worst way, but when the images of the war started to roll in the press turned their back on the war.

WE WON'T AND THAT IS WHY WE ARE PRESENTING THIS VIDEO AS GRAPHIC AS IT IS, BUT THAT IS WAR.

All the reasons why the United States invaded and occupied Iraq have been proven to be nothing but LIES, and this is what the Bush administration has left in their wake of invading and occupying Iraq. The children---the innocent children---of Iraq are the ones who have suffered the most from the United States invasion of their country. Sleep well, Mr. President.Sleep well, Mr. Vice President.This is what you have done. I doubt if you or any of your right wing chickenhawks have the guts to look at this video, but here it is for the people who care about what the Bush administration and the United States has done to the children of Iraq. WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS VERY GRAPHIC.

Today, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot continued to cheerlead for the “success” of the surge in Iraq in an online debate. Boot insisted that Iraq has met two-thirds of the original 18 benchmarks, that the government’s offensive in Basra was successful, and that the so-called Sons of Iraq will always remain loyal to the Shiite-controlled Iraqi state.Boot concluded by conceding that there are walls separating Sunni neighborhoods from Shia, but dismissed the fact by stating simply that “there are walls around many gated communities in the U.S. too”:

It’s true that there are walls around Dora and other Baghdad neighborhoods. … But then there are walls around many gated communities in the U.S. too. The walls per se are not evidence of reconciliation, I’ll grant you that. But nor are they evidence that reconciliation is impossible. They are one of the important security measures implemented in the past year that is reducing violence and making possible political progress—which is real, whether you admit it or not.

There is a world of difference between American gated communities — where at least 7 million families have chosen to live — and the walls that divide Baghdad.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Baghdad's crumbling roads, burst sewage pipes and chronic water shortages are casualties of war that get little attention amid the daily litany of gunfights, bombs and bloodletting in Iraq.

As summer approaches, the city is facing an acute shortage of drinking water despite the efforts of officials like Sadiq Shumari, its director of water services.

Temperatures are set to reach 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) and demand for the precious commodity will outstrip supply.

"We have a huge task to rehabilitate the water system, which has been neglected for decades, but it's a challenge with such poor security," Shumari told Reuters on a trip to the eastern neighborhood of New Baghdad, one of the city's poorest.

"Insecurity is a problem, but what doesn't get as noticed is how it hinders the provision of services which the people need to live," he said, before two loud blasts nearby sent him and some U.S. troops running for cover inside a building.

Lying far to the east of the Tigris River as it snakes through Baghdad's more upmarket districts, the dusty, overcrowded streets of New Baghdad are visibly poor.

Children in torn clothes play in the dirt, next to festering piles of trash and opaque puddles of stagnant water.

A man wearing a traditional long, white robe sits on a brick outside his house listening to an old battery-powered radio.

Next to him, a child attempts to negotiate a path between a ditch full of foul-smelling rainwater and a manmade mountain of polythene bags, Coke cans, plastic bottles and cigarette packets.

Even the services in Sadr City, a notoriously deprived slum to the north of New Baghdad and home to 2 million people -- where U.S. and Iraqi forces are battling Shi'ite militiamen loyal to populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- are more reliable than here.

BAGHDAD — After months of stalled talks between the United States and Iran, the Iraqi government said it was time for the two nations to stop trading accusations and come to the table.Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said that his government had proposed four dates to the United States and Iran for tri-lateral talks, but has stopped making suggestions and doesn't expect the talks to resume anytime soon.

The United States has accused Iran of supplying weapons that are being used to attack U.S. troops and civilians, while Iran has charged the United States with unnecessarily bombing the Shiite population in Baghdad. » read more

Entire sections of Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district have been left nearly abandoned by civilians fleeing a U.S.-led showdown with Shiite militias and seeking aid after facing shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian groups said Wednesday

Aid groups: Humanitarian woes grow in Baghdad's Sadr City By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer 42 minutes agohttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080507/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq.The reports by the agencies, including the U.N. children's fund, add to the individual accounts by civilians pouring out of the Sadr City area as clashes intensify.

U.S. forces have increased air power and armored patrols in the attempt to cripple Shiite militia influence in Sadr City, a slum of 2.5 million people that serves as the Baghdad base for the Mahdi Army led by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The battles started in late March after the Iraqi government opened a crackdown on militias and armed gangs in the southern city of Basra, including some groups Washington says have links to Iran.

Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF spokeswoman based in Jordan, said up to 150,000 people — including 75,000 children — were isolated in sections of Sadr City "cordoned off by military forces."She said about 6,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and that some areas of southeastern Sadr City were virtually abandoned.

The U.S. military is trying to weaken the militia grip in the slum and disrupt rocket and mortar strikes from Sadr City on the U.S.-protected Green Zone, which includes the U.S. Embassy and key Iraqi government offices.

News of the Pentagon's online posting of the documents came from Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who notes that NSNS provided the New York Times "limited information about a military office early in the reporting process."

More than two weeks after the New York Times reported on the Penatgon's military analyst program to sell controversial policies such as the invasion of Iraq, the broadcast television news outlets implicated in the program are hoping to tough out the scandal by refusing to report it. Recently Media Matters of America (MMA) reported that, according to a search of the Nexis database, "the three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have still not mentioned the report at all."

The Pew Excellence in Journalism project has a chart showing that " there was virtually no mainstream media follow up to The Times’ expose" with the only national TV coverage being the introduction segment and live debate featuring CMD's John Stauber on the PBS NewsHour.Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro and three dozen colleagues have sent a letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General calling for an investigation of this "propaganda campaign aimed at deliberately misleading the American public."

by Staff WritersWashington (AFP) May 6, 2008The Pentagon said Tuesday that any sizeable increase in much-needed US forces in Afghanistan will depend on deeper troop cuts in Iraq than currently planned.

Military commanders, worried about a persistent and growing Taliban challenge, have said they require up to three more brigades, or about 10,000 troops, to fill gaps in a NATO-led force in Afghanistan.

But Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell made clear that relief in Afghanistan can only come from Iraq, where US forces now find themselves embroiled in a bloody struggle with Shiite militias.

"We really have to get down in Iraq below 15 brigade combat teams for us to consider adding multiple additional brigades to Afghanistan," Morrell told reporters.

"So, not until we get to that point can we even consider that prospect," he said.US Defense Secretary Robert Gates had said after a summit of NATO leaders in Bucharest last month that he expects the United States to make a significant addition of its forces in Afghanistan next year.

WASHINGTON — The deaths of two U.S. soldiers in western Baghdad last week have sparked concerns that Iraqi insurgents have developed a new weapon capable of striking what the U.S. military considers its most explosive-resistant vehicle.

The soldiers were riding in a Mine Resistant Ambush Protective vehicle, known as an MRAP, when an explosion sent a blast of super-heated metal through the MRAP's armor and into the vehicle, killing them both.

Their deaths brought to eight the number of American troops killed while riding in an MRAP, which was developed and deployed to Iraq last year after years of acrimony over light armor on the Army's workhorse vehicle, the Humvee.

The military has praised the vehicles for saving hundreds of lives, saying they could withstand the IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, which have been the biggest killers of Americans in Iraq. The Pentagon has set aside $5.4 billion to acquire 4,000 MRAPs at more than $1 million each, making the MRAP the Defense Department's third largest acquisition program, behind missile defense and the Joint Strike Fighter.

But last Wednesday's attack has shown that the MRAPs are vulnerable to an especially potent form of IED known as an EFP, for explosively formed penetrator, which fires a superheated cone of metal through the vehicle's armor.

BAGHDAD — Scattered violence struck areas of Baghdad as well as parts of central and northern Iraq on Tuesday, as a trickle of families began to leave Sadr City to escape bombings, and Iraqi security forces raided a hospital suspected of treating militia forces.

In Baghdad, there were clashes in Abu Dshir, a mostly Shiite neighborhood on the city’s southern edge. The tensions were between the Mahdi Army, loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and the National Police. Three civilians were killed and nine were wounded in the fighting. The area had been one of the most violent until late last summer, when it quieted down and the militia put away its weapons.

Prompting the clashes were the attempted assassinations of two dignitaries in Abu Dshir — one a leader in the local Badr Organization, a group linked to the Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a rival of Mr. Sadr’s who runs the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and the other the neighborhood’s imam. Although both men survived, the episodes set off fighting between factions loyal to Mr. Hakim and those loyal to Mr. Sadr, said Sayyid Malik Abadi, , the head of Abu Dshir’s security committee.

Two mortar shells exploded Tuesday morning in the Baghdad municipal building, killing three civilians and wounding 15 people. And a rocket landed in Al Mansour University College, wounding five students, according to an official at the Interior Ministry who asked not to be quoted because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

Insurgents often fire mortar shells and rockets toward the Green Zone, headquarters of the Iraqi government and American Embassy, but their misses often harm civilians.

In the Shaula neighborhood, a Sadrist stronghold in western Baghdad, Iraqi forces captured several dozen police officers who were believed to be aiding militia fighters. Some of the officers were captured in a local hospital, which was believed to have been caring for militia fighters, according to a deputy of Qassim Atta, the military spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.Families have begun to leave Sadr City over the past several days, trickling into the grounds of a sports stadium in Baladiat, which is on the western edge of Sadr City.

The families, who lived near the front lines of the fighting and the wall being built by the American military to partition the neighborhood, said they had fled because their children were terrified of the bombing.

As many as 1,500 families are expected to go to the area in the next few days, said Abu Wa’il, the informal mayor of the refugees who live in the area. Some came as recently as two days ago and others have been there for several years, squatting in abandoned buildings. The army will provide tents for the refugees, he said, but there appeared to be no latrines and it seemed doubtful that there would be enough water to supply so many families.

In Tikrit, a car bomb exploded in midafternoon, killing two civilians and wounding 26 people, including four policemen. A curfew was in effect on Tuesday evening.

In Nineveh, an American soldier died after his patrol was attacked on Tuesday, the military said in a statement. In a separate incident in the province, Sunni extremists killed three Iraqi women and wounded two others in an attack on Monday, according to a statement from the American military. The local police said the extremists were members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the statement said.

About 3,500 soldiers from the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team will go back to Fort Benning, Georgia, over the next few weeks. It is the third surge brigade to leave Iraq, as planned, and two more are scheduled to leave by the end of July.

The U.S. troop increase in 2007, referred to as the surge, was designed to take on the insurgency in and around Baghdad and provide stability for Iraqi politicians to develop legislation and reach accommodation on key national issues.

"The continued drawdown of surge brigades demonstrates continued progress in Iraq," said Gen. Dan Allyn, chief of staff of Multi-National Corps - Iraq.

The troops went to Iraq in March 2007 to fight insurgents near Baghdad, east of the Diyala River.

The soldiers improved security, captured more than 600 insurgents, found many weapons, helped lower the number of attacks, assisted merchants in reopening shops and aided the local government authorities, the military said.